Wetwire
by TuxOtaku
Summary: This story deals chiefly with the introduction of Wetwire. A character of my own creation, created originally for a failed roleplaying game; and his budding relationship with Jubilee. Warning: Language - James  Wetwire , has a bit of a trucker-mouth. :P
1. Chapter 0: Wetwire Bio and Backstory

Name: James Lincoln  
>Codename: Wetwire<br>Age: 25  
>Birthday: June 17<br>Hair: Black w/pre-mature grey streaks along the sides. (Side effect of an incident dealing with his mutant ability)  
>Eyes: Brown<br>Skin Tone: Pale  
>Height: 6'<br>Weight: 220lbs.  
>Build: Stocky, "Barrel-Chested"...Not overweight but not fit as a fiddle either.<br>Race/Nationality: Canadian, ex-pat. Moved to US upon signing a job contract with a large internet company  
>Uniform:<br>* Black Duster-style Jacket lined with pockets full of electronic gadgetry  
>* Welder's goggles<br>* Motorcycle boots and gloves made from conductive cloth.

Uniform is "smart" (i.e. electronic, capable of interfacing with him alone via his mutant ability.): Current functionality includes goggles which can display a small HUD (heads-up display), and allow for remote control of his motorcycle as well as Gloves which can store a limited electric charge and can be used as a sort of single-use, defensive hand-to-hand weapon. Boots have magnetic hold capabilities via diamagnetic force.

James' "smart suit" is an "ongoing project"...he tinkers with it constantly and is always trying to work new functionality into it...however new "features" don't always work as intended, and can sometimes backfire horribly in-field at the worst possible times.

Standard Dress: James loves hats. They just look damn cool and plus, they hide his grey streaks...which he's a bit self-conscious about. Aside from the hat fetish, James is your basic geek...cargos, jeans, nerdy t-shirts that say things like "There's no place like " or "I got 63 Problems but knowin' Hex ain't one". He IS known to wear his duster jacket when not in full uniform, however. And will wear full uniform if he is riding his bike.

Place of Birth: Toronto, Canada Family: Moira Lincoln (mother, deceased) Shannon Lincoln (sister, deceased) Elias Lincoln (Father, deceased)

Superhuman Ability: Complete mental control of any electronic device. Not psychically, instead via touch. The nerve endings in his body are capable of sending signals into an electronic device much like a wireless battery charger.

Abilities (not gained from mutation): Lock-picking, Social Engineering, Genius-level IQ (160)

Non-mutant power skills: Computer Skills (Master), Small Weapons (Beginner), Formal Etiquette (Intermediate)

Personal Strengths: Extremely intelligent, natural aptitude with anything mechanical or electronic. Also very charismatic and well-spoken, which he used and still uses to his advantage as a hacker to gain access to information.

Personal Weaknesses: Impulsive, overly self-effacing at times. Also, not so much a personal weakness as a physical one...as a result of an severe accident involving his ability, James suffers from temporary bouts of Schizophasia (also called "Word Salad", a condition where the sufferer begins to seemingly string random words together into gibberish (albeit phonetically correct) sentences) and Synesthesia (a condition where the sufferer's sensory inputs become scrambled. i.e.: colours will trigger auditory cues, sounds will be associated with a bitter taste). Episodes tend to be brought on primarily by stress/anxiety or if he overexerts his mutant ability. Currently undergoing treatment for this condition from Doctor Henry McCoy and Headmaster Emma Frost.

Personality: Gregarious, laid back, self-effacing, and a bit of a charmer, James is your typical "life of the party". He's never taken life too seriously, and has always maintained that humour is the best medicine for anything that ails you. Beneath his quick wit and disarmingly laid back nature however...lies the mind of a young man who has been through far too much in his life. Also fiercely loyal and possessed of a strong sense of personal justice. He'll be your best friend, but cross those he cares about and things will go very badly for you.

Hobbies: Anything and everything involving computers or machinery. Especially enjoys spending time either working on his custom cruiser bike in the workshop Forge built for him, or fabricating little trinkets and toys with his homemade, voice-controlled rapid prototyping machine, which he dubbed "Forge Jr." or simply "Junior" for short.

History: James was that kid you knew in grade school who had a Star Wars lunch box, stayed indoors during recess and would rather take apart his toys than actually play with them. James grew up in Toronto, the eldest child of a relatively wealthy family, his father was an investment banker, and his mother was the head curator for the Art Gallery of Ontario. James showed a natural aptitude with computers from a very early age, and by the time he was 13, unbeknown to his parents, he had become a world-renowned hacker. Unfortunately, his infamy led him to a court case which involved shutting down a controversial wire-tapping service put in place by CSIS. The case was settled out of court, but he was put on a SHIELD watchlist. Years later, at 17, when his mutant powers manifested, and the war began, SHIELD tried to apprehend him due to a string of Denial of Service and Man-in-the-Middle attacks on SHIELD-controlled server farms dealing with mutant registration and apprehension. James was not responsible for the attacks, however SHIELD sought him out as the prime (and indeed only) suspect. James was out of the country at this time and came back to find his family murdered, clearly by SHIELD as a means to draw him out. Managing to escape, he used his abilities and his already finely-honed skills as a hacker to create a new identity for himself. It wasn't until a year later when he was working a security contract for a small internet company in San Francisco that SHIELD once again tried to take him. This time escape cost him the lives of his girlfriend of 8 months and many of his co-workers. Again he wiped himself from the public record, and lived as a transient on the streets of the Dogpatch neighbourhood in SF until eventually being found and offered sanctuary by Emma Frost and Academy X. He accepted eagerly, knowing that Ms. Frost or one of the many other telepaths she likely associates with could easily help exonerate him.


	2. Chapter 1: Tin Men and Scrambled Eggs

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Pre-introduction: This series involves an out-of-canon character of my own design that was originally created for a failed Role Playing Game. I decided to adapt this character to a series of Fan Fiction. The character's bio can be found amongst my other published documents if you are interested and perhaps want a little more backstory than I give here in the first chapter.

Wetwire: Chapter 1 – Tin Men and Scrambled Eggs

It was supposed to be a routine run. Go in, rescue hostages held by SHIELD, get out. Easy Peasy Japanesey. He'd never had problems with Sentinels before...Jump on their heads, punch a hole, do the voodoo he do so well, and bada bing! glorified puppets. But this go-around, his usual wetwire voodoo was, well, not quite working.

James Lincoln never quite understood how he did what he did...he just knew that when he got near technology, the going got weird...and as Hunter S. Thompson once said: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." James "turned pro" about a year ago when SHIELD goons showed up at his house, quietly murdered his family for reasons he is still unsure of (but has his suspicions about), and were promptly dispatched by The X-Men. Who then offered him sanctuary at Academy X. The brains back at the Academy ("Brains" being one blue furry dude called McCoy and a Tony Stark look-a-like everyone called Forge) tried to explain his "ability" as having something to do with nerve endings being able to interface directly with electronic circuitry...but James always just joked that he'd spent so long fiddling with machines that he'd started to almost become one himself. The end result more or less though, was that James could "wetwire" himself into any machine he touched. Which is exactly what they took to calling him at the Academy...Wetwire. He rather liked the name, reminded him of something out of old cyberpunk novels by William Gibson.

None of this, however, was anywhere NEAR approaching his mind as he stood atop the massive Sentinel's shoulders, slapping the robot's head as if he were a European grandmother trying to discipline a misbehaving child.

"Argh...c'mon, work dammit!" James shouted as the mechanized giant lurched on, firing great blasts of searing energy from its hands at his escaping compatriots on the ground several stories below.

"Wetwire! What the hell are you doing, kid? Hurry it the fuck up!" Shouted a gruff voice from below.

James knew and almost feared that voice...it belonged to a man called Logan, or Wolverine, if you were feeling official. One of the most feared mutants on the planet; word was he was nigh unkillable.

"Sorry Logan!" James shouted from high above as he continued to slap the side of the Sentinel's head,

"It looks liked they wetwire-proofed this thi..", before he could finish his sentence, something shot through his nerves and straight to the pain center of his brain and he screamed.

It felt like someone had stuck a homemade disposable-camera-style-stungun to the base of his spine and then finished the job with a two-by-four to the face. The Sentinel stopped dead in its tracks and the sudden stop threw a slumped, prostrate James Lincoln straight off...plummeting to the ground below. He would have been all but dead were it not for a red-and-silver-haired woman swooping in to catch him.

"You gotta be a lil' more careful, sugah!", she said with a southern lilt that always drove James crazy...or in this case, woke him straight up.

"Whuh? Rogue? What the bloody hell?" James muttered, almost incoherently.

"Y'all got tossed straight off that tin soldier! What'd you do to it anyways?" Rogue asked.

The best James could manage before passing out again was "Whu...Wetwire...dun work. Brick...face...pow. uugghh...monkey, buuuhh...blue monkey...guhhh-gotta see bluuuee monkey..."

The aforementioned "blue monkey" was none other than Dr. Henry McCoy, Hank to his close friends, though some still called him by the name given to him by the X-Men so many years ago: Beast. McCoy was the first thing James saw when he woke up in the Academy infirmary. At least he thought it was McCoy. He wasn't sure of anything at the moment...he couldn't tell if it was just painkillers, but his brain felt like an old analog TV tuned to a blocked channel...scrambled and fuzzy. He tried to form sentences, but all that came out was

"EGG! EGG! SCRAMBLED EGG! MANGO SALAD? WHERE'D I PUT THE BLUE HAMMERS? ROGUE! IS ROGUE ORANGE PURPLE TV BLOSSOMS?"

Rogue, who was in the back of the room along with Logan and Forge, gave a guilty look as she stifled a giggle at James' incoherent babble.

"Easy...easy now James." Beast said in a comforting tone.

"Your temporal lobe took a nasty jolt...what exactly from is something Forge and I are still trying to determine." He explained.

"SENTINEL...WETWIRE! TIN CAN BRICK FACE, LIGHTNING BOLT CHRISTMAS TREE!...FUCK!" James exclaimed.

"Uh, Hank, why's he talkin' like that?" Rogue asked from the corner of the room.

"Schizophasia Rogue...Word Salad. Whatever that Sentinel did to him, it scrambled his brain enough to cause a temporary case of Word Salad." Beast explained.

"YEAH! EGG! SCRAMBLED! MUMBLING TIN MAN KILLED CLOCKS IN MY EGG BASKET! CLOCKS...HMM...CLOCKS? WHERE'S THE CLOCK GOING? HOW IS THE SCRAMBLED EGG CLOCK STOPPING?" James shouted.

"I don't know James, it could last an hour, it could last a day...you took a pretty bad hit." McCoy said, to the surprise of everyone else in the room.

"You can understand this gibberish, Hank?" Logan asked.

"Yes actually...well...not truely...but I can more or less get a good guess at what he's trying to say, since schizophasia deals a lot with word association." Hank explained.

"He's speaking allegorically, you could say. You see, when he's talking about scrambled eggs, he means his brain. 'clocks' might imply temporal lobe." He continued.

Beast looked back at James who was finally sitting up, but looked puzzled and concerned by all this. "James, by the sounds of things the auditory centres of your temporal lobe were affected as well. The only thing I can suggest is rest for now. Your speech is still mostly incoherent, but I can already hear signs of improvement regarding phonetic structure and word association. I can give you something for the headache and the doubtless ringing in your ears, but aside from that...treat this like a migraine. Go find a nice, quiet, dark room and just get some sleep." Beast handed James a small bottle of percosets and looked back at Rogue and Forge, who had been sitting in the back corner of the room.

"Would you two mind escorting Mr. Lincoln back to his room?" Forge nodded and he and Rogue propped James up and hung an arm each against their shoulders and escorted the still disoriented James back to his room.

James passed in and out of consciousness as Rogue and Forge helped him back to his room. The ringing in his ears had all but ceased...unfortunately he still sounded like a madman.

"Forge?" James asked. "The tin man threw bricks. Why'd it throw bricks?"

Forge looked quizzically at him for a moment and tried to remember Hank's explanation.

"I'm going to assume 'tin man' means Sentinel...but 'throw bricks'? You mean how did it manage to do what it did?" He asked.

"Yeah...bricks hit the clock and the lights went out." James babbled.

"Well...from what we can tell, the Sentinel kind of saw you coming and threw up a defence mechanism reverse engineered on the spot from your own mutant ability." Forge explained.

"Bloody gobstoppers! Fucking Tin Man." James cursed.

"I want my egg-timer back..." He muttered.

"I know you do, James...it'll come back...eventually." Forge said in a reassuring tone, interpreting his ramblings as meaning he could tell he was speaking gibberish and that he wanted to be able to speak normally again.


	3. Chapter 2: Boredom

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 2 - Boredom

An hour or so had passed since Rogue and Forge had left, or at least to James, it FELT like an hour...he wasn't sure, and in his condition, didn't trust much of what his poor scrambled brain was telling him. He tried sleep, as Beast had recommended. But the second his head hit the pillow, he felt nauseous. He figured his equilibrium or something probably got scrambled along with the rest of his brain. So he resigned himself to tinkering with some gadgets he'd been working on. The Academy had pretty deep pockets...there wasn't much he couldn't get his hands on, where technology was concerned. He need only ask Forge or Beast and usually they'd get him whatever he needed. At present, he'd managed to secure himself more or less his own private datacenter on campus, just as his own private lab. Private is the key word here too...being a hacker means being at least slightly paranoid, so he had asked Forge and Beast to help him construct some manner of device that would let him access his lab, and him alone. The device in question was a personal bodyslide portal; voice-activated teleporation keyed to his unique genetic signature. It was the coolest thing James had ever heard of since SSL encryption. It was also, due to the fact that it was voice-activated, but thought-directed, the results of messing with bodysliding in his current condition were, well, interesting to say the least. Already he'd accidentally managed to bodyslide himself into the student lounge, Forge's lab, the passenger seat of Cyclops' car, and about 10 feet in the air above the campus football field. Thankfully the bodyslide only worked within campus grounds, James thought to himself. He wasn't sure if he wanted to try again...but he was bored and couldn't do much else until he found some way to sort out his garbled speech.

"Okay dumbass...let's try and make it to the lab this time..." James thought as he mustered what concentration he could.

"Bodyslide by one." He called out.

A flash of light and indescribable "un-noise" enveloped him and a millisecond later he smelled a whiff of fruity perfume and the slow, bassy throb of a dubstep beat. Being a bit of a music geek he picked out the tune immediately before realizing where he was. He could hear water somewhere in the distance, but the room was only dimly lit with some neon fluorotube seeming to hug every corner and edge of the room, like something out of Tron. The fluorotube changed colours in time with the bass in the song. His brain was still a bit wonky from the bodyslide...but he knew he wasn't in his lab. He didn't know WHERE he was...but it was somewhere cool to be certain,

"Cool lighting, bitchin' tunes, smells like mango...dunno who's room I ended up in, but I like their sty..." Before James could finish his thought, he was blinded by a faceful of colourful sparks. He realized in the instant between that and the kick to the gut that followed who's room he bodyslid into.

"James you perv! What the hell?" shouted Jubilee as she landed a good solid kick straight to James' ribs.

"ACK! JUBILEE! STOP! BODYSLIDE! TIN MAN ZAPPED MY HEAD! ALL BROKEN!" James shouted, still in pain. He looked up and opened his eyes and saw Jubilee, sopping wet with naught but a towel on, and his heart raced for a second.

"Out!" Jubilee shouted, smacking him across the head and pointing at her door. James darted out of the room and caught his breath in the hallway. James always had a bit of a crush on Jubilee...but really, who wouldn't? Perky, cute, asian...plus she was the only available girl there around his age. Jubilee came out of her room a couple of minutes later, hair still wet, but (to James' slight, private dismay) fully clothed.

"Okay Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do. What the hell were you doing in my room?" She said in annoyed admonishment.

"Earlier today, got zapped. Tin man did something to my head. Still kinda broken." James explained...noticing, to his surprise, that he was actually making some form of sense.

"Tin man? dubya-tee-eff? were Dorothy and the Scarecrow there too?" Jubilee said with a mocking snort.

"No no...sorry...other tin man...BIG tin man. Zapped my brain...gave me temporary word salad, Hank says." James tried to explain again, wincing when he realized he said "tin man" again.

"Big tin man? Sentinel?" Jubilee asked.

"YEAH! I tried to voodoo it and it zapped me and screwed up my cloc...err...brain." James explained, again pleasantly surprised that he was able to catch the erroneous word substitution of the temporary schizophasia which had been plaguing him all day.

"Fine but that still doesn't explain why you were in my room." Jubilee grumbled and looked as if she was going to wail on James again.

James put his hands up in defense and tried to explain further "Bodyslide! It's broken!...well..I'M broken, so IT'S broken."

"Bodyslide? Since when can you Bodyslide?" Jubilee asked, her voice dripping with skepticism.

"Forge set it up for me...it only works on campus grou...hey! I sound normal again!" James exclaimed excitedly.

"What were you doing going up against a Sentinel anyways?" Jubilee asked.

"Tell you what...since I no longer sound like a lunatic when I speak, how about I make it up to you? Let's go for a coffee and I'll explain." James asked, hoping Jubilee wouldn't pick up on his inadvertantly social engineering her into a coffee date.

"Someone's going to tell you eventually today, might as well be me; but be prepared. This is one seriously fucked up story...and it's only going to get more insane..." James warned.


	4. Chapter 3: Coffee Date

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 3 – Coffee Date

James and Jubilee headed towards the campus garage...James had thought momentarily about bodysliding the two of them there, just to be all slick and impress the pants off of Jubilee (hey, maybe even in a literal sense, you never know), but he gave it a pass, thinking he still didn't fully trust his mental faculties. They got within a few hundred feet of the garage entrance when James stopped them, pulled out his smartphone and gave it a tap. The garage doors groaned and screeched metallically as they opened and then his bike came roaring out on its own, coming to a dead stop in front of them. Jubilee blinked and did a bit of a double take at the sight of what she knew was a bike...though she'd NEVER seen any bike like this, let alone did she even know James HAD a bike...she had to supress her inner giggling-school-girl a little, realizing her weak spot for guys with bikes was getting to her.

"Wooooowww...Holy crap James! WHEN did you get THIS?" She ran her hand across the gas tank.

The bike was like something out of a Giger-influenced anime; Gunmetal grey, Biomech design, twin wheels on either end...it looked less like someone built it, and more like some mechanical creature had spawned it. It was badass and they both knew it.

"I built it...with Forge's help. It's all set up to work with my wetwire voodoo too...well, for the most part anyway. Still working on certain features...hence why I used my smartphone just now to "call" it." James explained.

"Damn dude...you've only been here a year now...colour me impressed." Jubilee said, still in awe of both the bike, and James. He wasn't all that bad to look at...if you didn't mind guys with a little bit extra. Tall, dark-haired...glasses, which normally Jubilee wasn't all that big on, but he made 'em work.

"Sooo...we going or are you gonna gawk and drool at the bike all day?" James asked her in his dorky (but cute? She thought) Canadian accent.

"Uhh..yeah. Yeah okay, where we headed?" She managed.

"Starbucks okay? Kinda jonesing for a Matcha latte...'sides, all the good stuff in that green tea might unfuck my brain a bit more, I figure." James said.

Jubilee nodded and James got on the bike, "Hop on. Hold on tight though...this thing has some SERIOUS pickup."

Jubilee flushed at the implications of that last bit, but got on and hugged her arms around James' waist as much as she could. The engine roared to life without so much as a thought (literally...the bike's ignition system was designed to work with James' mutant abilities) and they sped down the country road away from the academy.

What should have been a good twenty minute drive into the city was only about ten, and they soon found themselves sitting in Starbucks, drinks in hand.

"Y'know..." said Jubilee. "You never really told me much about how you ended up at the Academy...or where you came from originally for that matter."

"I don't really like talking about it..." James said, trying to stop this line of conversation before all the painful memories came flooding back.

"Suffice it to say, what brought me to the Academy is directly related to what happened today...or so I believe anyway." he hinted.

"Okay now you've got me all curious...spill. Promise I won't tell a soul." Jubilee said, reassuringly.

"No no...it's not like that, not really anyway...it's just...it's painful..." James said as his skin started to flush.

Jubilee noticed that as he said that, some of the plasma screens in the cafe started to switch to random channels.

"Look, I know we've only known each other for a year now...but we're the only two in that place who aren't kids, but aren't REALLY adults either, at least not in the way Cyclops and all the rest are adults." She said. "We've got to have each others' back".

James, though hesitant, DID like Jubilee (more than he would admit to most), and she definitely did have a point.

"Alright..." he sighed. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, for starters...I know you're Canadian, and I know you're from Toronto, and I KNOW you're a hacker aside from your mutant powers...but is that why you ended up here?" Jubilee asked.

"No..well...yes...and no." James winced. More screens in the background started going screwy.

"I came from a pretty wealthy, happy family. My siblings and I were always taken care of, I had a pretty good childhood...my parents were awesome...you might have heard of them, my mom was a home stager who had her own reality show and my dad was a real estate agent who specialized in flipping houses." James started.

"Wait...was?" Jubilee asked apprehensively.

"Yeah...years back something happened...it was all over the news..." James continued, trying to keep his composure. He hated telling this story...hated dredging these memories up...The cafe plasma screens all started switching to old, archival CP24 (A Canadian news station) footage.

As James continued. Jubilee (along with a few of the cafe patrons) noticed all the screens jumping and flickering, and started to clue in as to what was going on, and suddenly felt a pang of worry in her stomach about what might happen if James continued...but he needed to tell her, needed to know there was someone else he could trust.

"I was still technically living at home back then, because I was jumping from contract to contract...so I would spend time between my parents' house in Toronto and San Fran...I came home one day and saw police cruisers and emergency vehicles all the way down the street..."

Outside Jubilee heard a police siren start to go off on its own from a nearby cruiser which was parked across the street from the cafe...the plasma screens in the cafe started flipping between crime dramas on TV. Jubilee noticed James' hands starting to shake,

"They shot them, Jube...all of them...killed my entire family in cold blood!"

Jubilee had a feeling he was going to say that, but still felt shock, horror and sorrow and rage crossing her face all at once for her teammate and friend.

"Who? James, who killed them?" She asked anxiously.

James lost control completely in that moment. The nightmarish visions of his family lying dead on his living room floor filled his mind with a primal hatred and anger he had never had to face before. His eyes burned with rage and started to glow electric blue, his hands crackled with energy, the cafe's PA system began playing loud, angry, screeching death metal and every screen on every device within 100 feet of the cafe all displayed the same thing...the SHIELD emblem, dripping in blood.


	5. Chapter 4: Vengeance

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 4 – Vengeance

The cafe was dead silent for a few seconds as everyone suddenly noticed all the displays on whatever gadget they had on them suddenly change. Jubilee, horrified at what was going on, knew that this was James telling her "SHIELD murdered my family.", She struggled to keep composure as she knew she had to diffuse this fast.

"James...James...c'mon...let's go back to campus and you can tell me more the..." before she could finish her sentence, a voice over a megaphone interrupted her,

"This is SHIELD, please do not be alarmed, but we have reason to believe unregistered mutants have been spotted in the area. Please proceed out the front doors of the building where an agent will do a quick bio-scan to verify you are either human or a registered mutant on monitored leave from Genosha."

"DAMMIT!" Jubilee spat under her breath. She grabbed James by the arm and pulled him to his feet. "We've gotta get out of here and fast."

James snapped out of it just long enough to see what was going on. They darted out back and James called his bike. Just as they sped off, about half a kilometre up the road they saw it...a Sentinel, heading straight for them. James, still seething from recalling painful memories, decided now was as good a time as any to get sweet revenge. He jumped off the bike and ran straight towards the lumbering robot hulk.

"James...Wetwire...what the hell are you doing?" Jubilee called out.

"What I've wanted to do since I found my parents and siblings lying in a lifeless heap on our living room floor" James growled. "These heartless sons-of-bitches are going to pay in blood for what they did."

The sentinel saw them and immediately opened fire, spewing searing blasts of energy from its hands, James and Jubilee managed to dodge each blast, and got within a few feet of the sentinel's legs. James lept at its right leg and grabbed hold. He steadied himself as the creature flailed wildly trying to find him and scampered up the back of the purple gargant until he reached the base of it's head. He felt around using his ability for the circuitry that would allow him to take over and gave the metal behemoth a slap, instantly feeling familiar head rush he got whenever he took over a machine wash over him. A second later...he saw through the sentinel's eyes. He climbed up to its shoulders and then stretched out its hand.

"Jubilee, get on." Sentinel-James said, the voice sounding like a duet between both the Sentinel's synth-voice and James' own.

Jubilee did as he asked and climbed up the massive robot's shoulder, where James was perched, hand pressed against the base of the Sentinel's neck. His eyes glowed electric blue and Jubilee felt like she'd just jumped onto one of those static ball things they have at science museums.

"Hold on!" James said over the chaos of SHIELD agents shouting orders and closing in on them.

Jubilee grabbed hold of James' waist and the Sentinel lurched forward. With naught but a few steps, they found themselves face to face with a full SHIELD detachment...personnel carriers, small assault vehicles, choppers in the air and a sea of SHIELD goons all armed to the teeth.

"Mutant, you are in possession of SHIELD property. Release control of the Sentinel at once! If you come peacefully, no harm will come to you or your friend." The SHIELD goon bellowed through his megaphone.

"No harm?" James boomed through the Sentinel's voicebox.

"Is that what you rat bastards told my family before you shot them?" He spat with all the vitriol and rage the Sentinel's synthvoice was capable of.

"Tell you what, I've got a better idea. You tell Fury I'll see his bald, eyepatched ass in a body bag for handing down those orders." He shouted.

"Now let ME go peacefully, and YOU won't be harmed? Savvy?" His eyes were burning and Jubilee saw tears streaming down his cheeks and whipping away in the wind.

She wanted to get them out of there before he did something he'd regret...James wasn't a violent person...unless you harmed or did wrong to someone he cared about, then all bets were off. She knew this much of him for certain. At the same time though, her heart was breaking for James' loss, and some dark part of her was craving vengeance just as much as he was in this moment.

Suddenly James heard whipping noises behind him and knew it was a chopper. Instinctively, he reached back with the sentinel's giant arm, grabbed the chopper by its tail and slammed it into the ground below, the body crumpling like a soda can, its occupants killed instantly upon impact . The rotors of the chopper chewed the ground,, sending bits of pavement-shrapnel flying like concrete bullets, which beaned more than a few SHIELD troops and knocked them cold.

"See? I told you...you didn't listen and I FUCKING told you" the robot cursed.

Before James could command the robot to make another move, a bright flash of light hit the sentinel straight in the eyes and James screamed. He was blind.

"Jubilee! Argh! Why?" Jubilee caught him in her arms as he slumped and rubbed at his eyes.

"It wasn't me James...I swear!" she protested.

"Wetwire! Jubilee! What the hell are you two doing up there?" A familiar, commanding voice shouted. Suddenly they both knew where the light had come from...Cyclops.


	6. Chapter 5: Cavalry Cleanup

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 5 – Cavalry Cleanup

Scott Summers always considered himself an understanding man, but he was entirely confused as to how all this happened. He knew both these students, and knew neither was particularly aggressive. It made no sense.

"Cyclops!" Jubilee called from atop the giant purple automaton,

"it's Ja...err...Wetwire." all the chaos almost made her slip and use Wetwire's real name in front of SHIELD agents. "We were just out for coffee, something spooked him and his powers went whacko and that's when these goons showed up."

Jubilee noticed that the aforementioned "goons" were frozen in place. Like someone had just hit the pause button on a video. In fact...EVERYONE but themselves were frozen in the same manner..."frozen?" She thought..."Frost."

"Indeed." a demure English voice responded. It was the kind of voice that promised fulfillment of whatever carnal desire you might have.

"Someone should really put a leash on you, Jubilee...and perhaps your friend here as well." Emma said, half-mockingly.

"I'm guessing you're the one who hit the eye-arr-ell pause button, Em?" Jubilee shot back, knowing only Scott could call her "Em".

"Yes, now can we be on our way?" White Queen said impatiently.

"Not until we do something about Wetwire." James was slumped into a fetal position, sobbing like a child who'd just lost his dog.

Suddenly Jubilee heard White Queen's voice in her head "I know how you feel about him...so I'm going to put him out for a bit, but when we get him back on campus he's YOUR responsibility...think of it as a peace offering from me, I know we've been at each other for a while now."

Emma put a finger to her lips and gave a wry smirk, then stooped over James, put a hand to his head and whispered in his ear, "Sleep now, poor boy...your brain and psyche have had enough torment for one day."

With that, James fell over unconscious, with Jubilee rushing over to make sure he didn't fall off the sentinel's shoulders.

Emma lifted them all telekenetically, and set them down on the ground. She carried James in a TK bubble all the way back to Cyclops' car, where Jubilee said "James' bike! We need to bring it...there's technology on there that SHIELD could use against him."

Suddenly there was a smell of sulphur and a BAMF!

"Kein Problem, fraulein!" Nightcrawler said in his heavy German accent.

"Damen Frost told me telepathically you were in einem kampf mit SHIELD agents and might need a quick exit." He explained., snapping his blue clawed fingers and flashing a shark-toothed smile.

"Thanks Kurt, would you mind teleporting us back to the garage with his bike and then to his room?" Jubilee asked...glad that this was all over, but still reeling and trying to piece together why SHIELD was singling James out like this.

"Jawhol! Bring Herr Lincoln here and hold on." Kurt requested. Emma picked James out of the car with her mind and placed him on his bike

"Hurry!" she said. "I can't hold all this for much longer...my head is killing me with all this multitasking."

With that, there was another BAMF! And they were gone. Scott walked over to her and said "now the tricky part is...what do we do with them?" nodding over at the frozen fracas in front of them.

"I have an idea..." she said pensively, "But it's going to give you one bloody hell of a headache..."


	7. Chapter 6: Vigil

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 6 - Vigil

Back at the academy, James was out cold, and Jubilee was holding vigil outside his room, trying to explain to Nightcrawler what happened.

"Mein Gott! Das ist Schrecklich!" Kurt exclaimed, his amber eyes wide with horror and disgust. "So SHIELD killed James' ENTIRE family in cold blood just to get to him?"

"I know...I felt like someone tore my heart out of my chest when he told me that..." Jubilee said, a worried frown crossing her normally carefree face. "I mean, sure, anti-mutant jackasses hassled MY family, but at least they're still around."

"What puzzles me is that SHIELD did this." Kurt mused, "They may do some questionable things...but cold-blooded murder? Ich kenne nicht...der nur unergründlich für sie ist."

Hanging around with Nightcrawler meant you had to know a little bit of German, because even though he'd been in America for quite a while, he still lapsed into his native tongue now and then, especially after hearing a troubling story such as James'. In most cases Jubilee could figure out what he was saying...but that last bit made her head spin.

"Yeah...just, promise me one thing...can we keep this between us? I promised James I wouldn't tell anyone, but you're a priest still, right? I can count on you to keep it on the dee-ell?" She asked.

"Jawhol fraulein, as of now the only other person that knows is mein Gott im Himmel. Und given my priestly duties, I can vouch for Him." Kurt said, reassuringly. He didn't like keeping secrets, as honest as he was...but he knew that in this world they were a necessary evil sometimes.

A day later and Jubilee was still there, keeping watch over James as he lay unconscious in his bed. She was really worried about him...she'd seen him use his powers once or twice, but never had she seen him do what he did the day before. She found herself feeling as hurt and indignant as James must feel. Suddenly she heard a groaning noise, turned her head and saw James starting to stir.

"Hey sleeping dorky, how's your head?" James felt like someone had replaced his brain with a jello mold.

"Mmmffrrff...Ju...Jube? Jubilee? I feel like I just drank a 40 of straight absinthe." He grumbled...his voice sounding and throat feeling like someone had poured hot gravel down his throat. He smelled something familiar in the air...coffee...but not just any coffee.

"Timmies? Where'd you get Timmies?" He asked, wondering if he was delusional. "I asked Logan if there was anything of home that might make you feel better when you came to" Jubilee explained.

"He said 'Tim Hortons Coffee, two cream, two sugar...it's a Canadian thing.'" She continued.

"So I had Kurt teleport me to the closest spot in Toronto he knew of and I GPS'd my way to a Tim Hortons, I bought Timbits too...oh and FYI, you guys have some WEEEEEIIIRD street names in Toronto...'Spadina'? And what the hell is a 'Quay'?"

James chuckled woozily. "You are AWESOME."

"I'm just glad you're okay...you had me worried for a minute there." Jubilee said. It wasn't ALL she wanted to say...but what she wanted to say, she wasn't sure how to put into words, or even rational thought. Instead, on impulse, she leapt out of the chair where she'd been sitting, threw her arms around James and gave him a kiss that sent his head spinning. A kiss which he returned. A minute later they were all over each other on the floor of James' dorm room.


	8. Chapter 7: One Hell of a Kiss

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 7 – One Hell of a Kiss

James head just about exploded; he and Jubilee had been friends almost since he'd come to the Academy. They had flirted a little, but neither ever expected it to go past that. His mind was suddenly a jumbled mess of emotion...he didn't know what to say. However when Jubilee finally let go of him, he felt like he had just won the lottery...a giant smile crossed his face.

"Wow..." he giggled, "I'll remember to fry my egg-timer more often". James said with a smirk.

Jubilee gave him a puzzled look. "Egg timer?" she asked quizzically.

"What? Egg-timer?" oh no." James thought.

"Crap." he said aloud. "The egg-timer's gone loony again. I can't talk to the jailbirds because they shot the clock and knocked over the egg-timer" He babbled in a half-panicked voice.

Jubilee wrinkled her nose in confusion and stifled a giggle. James wanted to say something about it being cute, but was afraid to say anything for fear his schizophasia would mutate his thoughts into something embarrassing or insulting.

"Ohhhh wait...is this that word salad thing you were talking about?" She asked.

James nodded and said, "Carmen Miranda gave me her hat and it's glued there."

"Holy crap," Jubilee thought, her brain doing some serious mental gymnastics trying to decipher James' barely coherent babble. "this is harder than when Kurt lapses into German".

"So what triggers it?" Jubilee asked.

"Well," James began, "if someone pops the egg-timer and I don't know, the clock dies, my mattress kicks me out later and then I have to pop it again to put the jailbirds back in order."

Jubilee felt sorry she asked. She put an arm around her afflicted friend, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He smiled back and she asked, "so who can we talk to about this?"

"Blue Monkey, or Frosty the Snowman" James said with a sigh.

Finally a sentence in all this gibberish that made sense. Jubilee thought. "Blue Monkey" was obvious, and if Hank was "Blue Monkey"... Jubilee giggled at James' word-salad-ified name for his other benefactor. "'Frosty the Snowman' eh?" She said with a goofy smirk. "Just don't let Emma hear you calling her that when your brain ISN'T scrambled." she tapped on James' forehead and he gave a little nervous giggle.

A few minutes later, they went off to find Beast and get some answers about James' condition.


	9. Chapter 8: Blue Monkey

License information: All text herein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. If you like what you see, you may share this work with friends but you cannot make derivative works of it and cannot use this text for commercial purposes. All original characters Copyright 2011 Ryan Draga, all unoriginal characters are Copyright Marvel Inc.

Wetwire: Chapter 8 – Blue Monkey

"Oh my stars and garters! This will never do." Hank said, fussing over some petri dishes containing bacterial cultures he'd been cultivating.

He heard the buzzer for the laboratory door go off and went to investigate, placing the petri dishes back in the lab refrigerator.

"Oh hullo Jubilee...what brings you to my...ah and Mr. Lincoln as well! My my, aren't I the popular one today?" Hank said with a smirk.

"Hank, something's wrong with James..." Jubilee said with a worried look on her face.

"Well now Mr. Lincoln," Hank said in his reassuring doctor voice, "What seems to be the problem?"

James hesitated for a second, knowing what he wanted to say, but unsure of what he WOULD say. "Egg-Timer's doin' the Funky Chicken again..." He said in an exasperated tone.

Hank blinked for a second and suddenly remembered. "Oh dear...your schizophasia is back?"

James nodded in response. "Humpty-Dumpty." He said.

Beast played with the fur on his chin for a second in contemplation. "Well...this might not be such a bad thing...perhaps we can trace back now and discover what exactly caused this particular episode, and in doing so, prevent or better prepare for any further episodes." he posited, walking over to his desk to grab a paper and pen.

"So what was the last thing you remember doing before your speech became garbled?" Hank asked.

Jubilee and James gave each other a sly look and Jubilee blushed a little. Hank raised an eyebrow in slight surprise, having an idea what that look meant. "Oh my stars and garters...you two? Really now..." he said with a little chuckle.

James went to say something but Jubilee covered his mouth "Better let me do the talking for a bit." she said. "Hank, could you keep this between us? I...and I'm pretty sure James too, would much rather keep this quiet for now." James nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

Hank put a hand to his furry pursed lips, making a motion like turning a key in a lock. "Say no more of it. What you two do is your business. Though this DOES raise some interesting questions regarding your condition James."

James raised an eyebrow and Hank continued, "There is a distinct possibility, in fact dare I say probability, that your episodes are triggered by stress, or strong emotional responses in general."

"So when the weasel gets burned, apples float out of my mouth and make the world a squirrel?" James babbled.

Hank looked astonished, but yet he was almost certain he understood what was going on. "It seems as well that the incoherent nature of your speech is directly proportional to your level of stress. Fascinating." he said, scratching his head.

Jubilee knew Beast was genuinely concerned...but his nonchalant dissection of James' condition was starting to really grate on her, "FASCINATING?" she shouted in frustration, "He sounds like someone just poured a litre of LSD into his brain, Hank! And for all your wonderful observations...how do we fix the problem?" She looked as if she would explode in a shower of her own sparks.

James, seeing Jubilee so distraught, tried to calm her down...but all that came out was, "Since when does the cheese hit the fan and why are blue midgets hitting me with fish?" At this point he was so flustered that he was completely unaware that he was babbling.

"James! Jubilee! Please calm down...I may have a solution...I can't promise it will work, but it certainly can't hurt..." Beast said in a cautious but reassuring tone. "You see, word salad is sometimes a symptom of schizophrenia. You could almost say both conditions are inextricably linked." He explained. "Thus treating you using the same techniques may help."

Jubilee didn't like the sound of this, "So we gotta give poor James crazy meds?"

"No, not exactly. Not in the sense of pharmaceuticals like Thorazine." Beast explained. "There are naturopathic means that have shown very positive results, sometimes even in the most dire cases of paranoid schizophrenic delusions."

"So what do we have to do?" Jubilee asked, slightly more relieved that her friend wouldn't end up a med-zombie.

"Eat lots of eggs and cheese...or for that matter any food or beverage with high concentrations of Omega-3 Fatty Acids...again I can't promise it will work in the long term...but perhaps in the short term it will help you recover from an episode once it hits." Beast said.

"There is one other thing, speaking of long-term cures...I'd like you to go and see Emma. Her unique telepathic skills might help you sort out your mind during an episode or possibly find alternate means of communicating should you have one."

Jubilee stifled a shiver at the last part. There was no love lost between the White Queen and Jubilee...and despite Emma's best efforts, Jubilee still didn't fully trust her, and certainly didn't trust her enough to go mucking around in the head of someone she cared so much about. She knew though, that Hank trusted her...and she trusted Hank.

Shortly thereafter, Hank sent Jubilee and James on their way, recommending that they both get some much needed rest. On the walk back to James' room, he tried so hard to sort himself out. When they finally made it back to his room, he sat her down and tried in vain to compose himself. He wanted to tell Jubilee how much it meant to him knowing that she had his back, and that she truly cared for someone she'd known only for a relatively short time; but of course, he could only babble nonsensically.

Strangely though, Jubilee stopped him, smiled and said, "It's okay...I know what you're trying to say...I think, and honestly, I feel the same way." James responded with a crooked smirk. Jubilee put an arm around him, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and they ended up falling asleep hunched against each other in the big leather couch that sat against the far wall of James' room.


End file.
